Mission

The ‘monastery’ is a metaphor, a reminder to carry the values of calmness and stillness into our everyday lives. The monastery is in all of us.

Focus

The monastery is an informal Order.

Our focus is on learning about and sharing a better way of living within ourselves and with each other and the world.

Our approach

The Little Creek Monastery is a singularly unique representation of the emerging monastic model called The New Monasticism. While the basis of our founding the monastery was not New Monasticism (which is based in Christian thought and tradition) it may help provide some intellectual framework for gaining an understanding to our approach, which is focused on everyday life integration.

When you have too many thoughts, you can't think.

We respect the traditional monastery's approach. They have their responsibilities, and we have ours.

Our Writings

The monastery's writings focus on practical philosophical and experiential essays, including supportive insights from the martial arts, consciousness research and science. Check out Ways of Scientific Knowing.

Everyday Life

One point of view we strongly share with New Monasticism is the notion that our monastic 'cells' or monasteries have become our homes, offices, apartments and even our vans, tents and RVs.

That's because the original monastics, the Desert Fathers, left the cities and relocated to the wilderness. Similarly, today’s everyday monastic is discovering that urban and suburban settings are the new wilderness. This form of monasticism seems very congruent with ‘small living’. As economic constraints continue to pressure most people, the concept of ‘living small’ will increase in popularity. We believe small living forces people to clear the clutter from their lives, which is highly compatible with the mindset of an everyday-life monastic clearing or emptying his or her heart and mind.

Our main concept is thatwe are integrating our practices into everyday life.

It's one thing to study books, train with a teacher, or sit in a meditation class. But it’s another thing altogether to cross-relate deeply meaningful concepts into seamless, unobtrusive, practical everyday applications.

"‘Mysticism’ is about doing, rather than about thinking or feeling (some might say it is about being, which is true, but in the sense of how one’s state of being is transformed by exposure, experience and practice, rather than through trying to be a certain way, which is just imitation)." - from the essay

— James Souttar, Founding Writer, London

Main Project

Our primary project has a single-minded objective: to find a way to put into words a practical and universally effective how-to guide for deeper conscious awareness and experiences. Something so universal, and so plainly laid out, that anyone could read it, comprehend it and do it.

And yes, we know that’s what the Bible, Koran, Tao and so many other books and tomes are doing. Read it, meditate, pray and repeat… that’s the drill.

And to that we say, respectfully, then show us the throngs of people who are having the deeper experiences and realizations. Show us a planet that’s improving. Instead we see life-threatening global warming, and a further rise of concentration of wealth, power and glorification of greed and selfishness.

Not to disrespect all the hard work, sweat, persistence and realizations which are occurring. But we need something more scalable and readily repeatable.

We believe that the way to overcome the tyranny of greed and divisiveness is to find ways for all of us to develop higher perspectives, to become more deeply aware and conscious of the more fundamental nature of life, and to be even more engaged in the attributes of consideration, compassion and responsibility.